I'm not mean enough to run a "he's not 'Stayin' Alive'" joke here...

...Robin Gibb is apparently soon to shuffle off this mortal coil.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-etw-robin-gibb-20120415,0,2994000.story

<corrected spelling of Gibbs to Gibb>

 

awwww awwww awwww awwww

 

But you are mean enough to spell his name wrong.

 

No. No, I don't

 

Holy crap in all these years I never realized they were Gibb and not Gibbs.

Learn something new every day.

 

Man, the falsetto of the gods. The notes he hit in Tragedy may be the only time those notes were hit in a rock song. The contrast between him and Maurice makes the vocals in Nights on Broadway some of my favorites,

 

Yes, a truly amazing singer. He wasn't the star of the group -- I think Barry Gibb was -- but he is the one who really made it special and made it stand out at times.

The best talent in the family, though, was youngest (and unaffiliated) brother Andy...

 

I caught the Bee Gees biography and the Stayin' Alive retrospective -- I think they were on the History Channel but I'm not sure -- and was riveted. I honestly couldn't believe how interesting it was.

 

Andy? The best talent? If the talent is volume of cocaine snorting, maybe. Barry Gibb was a prolific songwriter, musician and arranger, for many acts beyond the Bee Gees, too. He hogged most of the talent in that family.

 

The Bee Gees were only the soundtrack for the disco era. Andy Gibb, sadly, was the embodiment of it. Coked his way out of a life. I saw on YouTube some concert he had in Peru after the glory days ended. Whatta hot mess he was.

 

Seems appropriate I listened to an AT40 today from April 1978 ... when the Bee Gees were at the peak of their Saturday Night Fever powers.

Besides Night Fever being No. 1 and Stayin' Alive being No. 2, they their hands in several other hits, including a few that had nothing to do with Saturday Night Fever. Unreal run they had, and not only do all of their SNF songs hold-up extremely well, they might sound even better in hindsight. I could listen to Night Fever on an endless loop. They struck an epic groove with that song.

 

The first four songs on the SNF soundtrack (Stayin' Alive-How Deep Is Your Love-Night Fever-More Than A Woman) are the musical equivalent of a baseball team hitting four straight 600-foot homers. Just fucking perfect. The rest of the album has some filler, but I swear even at the back end it is still fueled by those four songs.